


Now and at the hour

by IndigoStarblaster



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Gen, canonical violence, dream imagery, references to canonical deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:24:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoStarblaster/pseuds/IndigoStarblaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark never remembers his dreams, but he dreams of his mother every night.</p><p>In <em>Iron Man</em>, when Tony is being waterboarded and again after the fight with Obadiah, there is a female voice faintly calling out his name as he goes unconscious.  I keep hearing it and wondering. Time period spans from Tony, age 17, to just before the start of <em>Iron Man 2</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now and at the hour

**Author's Note:**

> This is an experiment, a fic that is more about resonance and less about plot. Many thanks as always to Rebecca for beta and encouragement!

*****

Tony Stark never remembers his dreams, but he dreams of his mother every night.

He is seventeen, and her funeral – hers and his father's – is tomorrow. He breaks into his father's liquor cabinet, his now, everything oh god the house the _houses_ the furniture the company, drinks scotch and bourbon and scotch again, drinks and throws up, drinks again, slides into a stupor of alcohol poisoning, a few minutes of REM sleep amidst the hours of unconsciousness.

_(She is in the garden, smiling at him, arranging flowers in a bowl, wearing a white dress. "Did you do your homework?"_

_Tony went to boarding school. She never once in her life asked Tony about his homework. "Yes. I'm all done." He attended his last class at MIT a month ago._

_"Good boy.")_

He wakes in a puddle of spilled scotch and shattered bottle glass, covered in his own vomit. Not dead. Not even late for the funeral.

Days and weeks and months pass. Tony indulges in a thousand distractions, never thinks of her at all. Every night he sees her in the garden. 

_(Sometimes it is also a kitchen or someone else's house or the library in his first school, but it is also always a garden, blue sky verdant grasses the dark silhouette of trees on every side. She bakes him pies (could she even bake?) and reads him stories (this might have happened, before he was sent away). She smiles at him, calls him a good boy.)_

He is twenty and restless, far from home, sick of running away. 

_(She is sitting on a bench in the garden, dressed like a WREN (she wasn't even born until after the Second World War), hands folded in her lap. "Tony. Tonino. Do you know the doctrine of a just war under heaven?"_

_Tony frowns. "Medieval thing. If every man does his part, the right side will win."_

_She nods, dark eyes intent on his. "God is just. Mortals cannot always see. But if battle is entered, each knight adhering to the code of the right, the right will prevail."_

_"Do...did you believe in God?" Tony cannot remember if his mother went to church._

_She tilts her head questioningly. "Do you doubt that God is just?")_

Tony wakes thinking he dreamed of red skies and pi to one hundred decimal places. On a whim he goes home, puts programming and engineering skills three years rusty to work. He mentions offhandedly to the weapons development team lead how much flack he gets for being a baby-killing capitalist. The older man nods. "They just don't understand. There's a line; we don't cross it."

Tony is comforted, steps into his father's shoes, devotes himself to smarter weapons, advanced robotics, satellite targeting. 

*

Twenty-five years old.

_(He asks, "Am I a good man?"_

_Maria is weeding, wearing gardening gloves and old clothes. She glances up, smiles reassuringly. "You will be.")_

*

Age thirty. Business is booming. He is starting to lose track of the women he's slept with.

_("Am I doing the right thing?" Her smile is gentle but she says nothing, finishes pouring her tea, puts down the teapot. Folds her hands in her lap.)_

*

Tony Stark is thirty-five. He is a merchant of death with the accolades of a grateful nation. Boredom is a restless itch at the foundation of his soul, overlain with a thousand amusing distractions. 

_(His mother has her dark hair in braids, and they are walking along  a trail, under trees. "You have been asleep a long time," she says. The path narrows and she steps in front, half-ducking under a trailing branch._

_"I've been working. Building the company."_

_"You've been playing." Tony looks down and realizes he is holding a bow, the kind that children make from fallen sticks and kitchen string. "My boy, my little one. It is long past time to wake." She glances back. "Where are your arrows?"_

_Tony shrugs. He doesn't know._

_"There will be pain and struggle." Tony makes a face; he doesn't like pain and struggle. "You must be broken, so that you can become stronger at the broken places."_

_"I don't want to be broken."_

_She turns, looks back at him somberly. "It is not too late.")_

He goes to Afghanistan. 

He shakes hands with generals and impresses the hell out of them and wants the young soldiers to like him because they are young and foolish and brave and everything he is not.

They are torn to pieces in front of him.

He is torn to pieces in front of himself.

The middle section of his sternum is gone the soggy mass of his lungs pushed aside an electromagnetic plate pushed flat against his forever injured compromised useless struggling spasming heart, sternum ends and ribs and intercostal muscle wired and stitched together over and under the access tube. It aches and aches, trailing wires that tug at already aching flesh and he wants to cry because he will never be handsome and whole again.

And then they are laying hard hands on him no one has ever dared touch him like this like he doesn't matter like he has no say and they are drowning him over and over and over–

_("Tony!")_

– he hears her voice he never hears –

_("Tony!")_

– impossible he must be falling –

_(He gasps in a cave, sitting beside a dark still pool, and she is sitting right beside him, her hand on his cheek, a glimmer of light showing her dark eyes concerned in her pale face. "Tony. Tonino."_

_"Mama." He is trembling, not drowning, not in pain, but the memory so close, so ready to swallow him whole. "Mama. Is...is this God being just?"_

_"You are being broken now. Be strong, my little one. Become who you must be.")_

– and hard hands pull him upwards into the freezing air the harsh light he is horribly awake and feels only terror.

He can't do this he can't do this he can't.

And then he does.

Yinsen dies, and Tony lives. He doesn't know why, only that he _must_ make it count. 

People are angry with him where are the toys you used to make us lovely shining flying spinning deadly toys. 

It doesn't matter. He is strong in the broken places where once he was pliable and distractable, and while he would wish that pain struggle loss on no one. At last. He has something he _wants_ to do, for the right reasons.

*

_("There were two sons. Abel was a hunter, his father's beloved."_

_They are having a picnic under a circle of trees, half-eaten sandwiches and carrot sticks on plastic plates and lemonade in plastic cups scattered between them (this never happened). Tony takes a bite of his sandwich (it melts away, dream food being what it is), says, "I think I know this one. His brother kills him."_

_She brushes crumbs off her lap with delicate fingers. "What does Obadiah say to you?"_

_Tony thinks about this. "He tells me to smile for the camera." Pause. "He tells me we're a team."_

_She looks away, past the trees to the field beyond. "Cain was a farmer. He went to the fields every day. Abel came home with an offering, and Cain slew him and scattered his blood and parts in the field." The sunlight is filtered through leaves and she is in dappled shadow._

_"Good thing I have no brothers."_

_She looks up through the trees, frowning a little. Even though the sky is still blue, suddenly it feels cold to Tony.)_

There is betrayal upon betrayal. 

Obadiah, second father, closer and kinder and more loving than ever Howard was. It was Obadiah _terror pain struggle loss_ _young foolish soldiers ripped to pieces_ all on him. Not enough, apparently. Perverts the work of Tony's hands, steals the company, rips out his heart and leaves him to die. Tries to kill Pepper oh god Pepper this is my fault tries to kill Tony _again_.  

Obadiah is bigger and stronger and he wants Tony to die.

Tony doesn't want to die, doesn't want to kill. Will do both, if this is what is required of him. 

"Pepper. Do it!"

Pepper brave beautiful ruthless kind shatters the heart of the building blinding white light unbelievable power pouring straight up into the sky, Obadiah falls inward and is swallowed obliterated not even ash remaining, Tony is knocked aside and his damaged useless substitute excuse for a heart flickers, goes out –

_("Tony!")_

– and he is –

_(He is sitting in a field under a night sky full of stars, and Maria is sitting with him, holding his hand in hers. They sit in silence for the space of a heartbeat, or ten._

_"You're always here," he says, looking at her._

_She glances at Tony, love and understanding and forgiveness in the squeeze of her fingers. "I will always be with you, unto the end, Tonino.")_

– and it flickers back on.

*

Things are confusing for a while.

SHIELD is angry with him and he is a celebrity. The company is in disarray and Pepper is continually exasperated and the clarity of purpose he had only a month ago is becoming muddled. But Tony remembers, sort of. The point is to do the right thing. To do all the right things.

Protect the innocent. Use power for the good…save the environment…don't have sex with groupies? 

There are new rules, new distractions. Children want his autograph. He brokers a ceasefire in the Middle East, then rescues miners from a collapsed mine in the Andes, then is ambushed by yet another round of semi-hostile debriefings with NSA, CIA, FBI, NSAF, USTAG. SHIELD calls, again.

He just needs time to figure it out, time to think, but the candle is burning at both ends genius billionaire playboy philanthropist superhero CEO celebrity not enough time and he falls asleep sitting at the workbench waiting for Dummy to bring life-saving coffee before he throws himself into another thousand projects.

_(It’s night time, and she is standing beside him, facing away, looking at a forest, massive oaks and firs stretching to either side of them. There is a breeze blowing, a lonely sound, and Tony is cold inside and out._

_"There." As she speaks, the trees shift, somehow, a trick of the eyes, and what was an impenetrable thicket is now the barest hint of an opening, beyond which is pitch darkness._

_"Let me guess. I'm supposed to go in there."_

_"Each must enter the wood where it is darkest." She doesn't look at Tony, only at the narrow gap in the trees, dark eyes troubled. "You will be tested. Your father had many sons, and they will seek you out."_

_Even here in his dreams he is tired, and the memory of exhaustion echoes inside him hollow empty hungry. Frustration wells up, spills out in words. "Mom. Haven't I struggled enough? Why am I doing this, why did you let me start in this? Maybe I shouldn't even be here. Maybe they wouldn't have died but for me. Maybe I could have been a, a toymaker." He doesn't even know what he's saying, only that so many have died since he started so long ago trying to do the right thing, what is the right thing, how can he ever know._

_She turns to look at him. "You are your father's son." Grasps his gauntleted hands in hers, and he realizes he is in armour. Like a knight. "You were born in debt, your hands steeped in blood."_

_Tony looks down, afraid of what he might see, but the blood is old, just traces staining the articulated joints of his fingers. "So… what, shoemakers' sons make shoes?"_

_"The meek do not inherit the earth." Tony knows this, does not want to meet her eye, the implied reprimand, though her voice is gentle, continues to be gentle. "They are trampled into it, if there is no one to stand between them and the ruthless." Still holding his hands, she looks again at the forest._

_Tony knows that he can stand here forever or enter the forest, but no other choice will ever appear._

_"Well. That's that, then." Tony tries for nonchalance, for bravado. "What will I find in there?"_

_"Terrible things." Maria's eyes linger a little longer, then turn back towards him._

_"Sounds fun."_

_"You may wander for years. Languishing.  You may…fall… before ever you find your way out." She bows her head for just a moment, a barely perceptible tremor in her thin shoulders. But then she raises her head, looks Tony straight in the eye again, her fingers firmly grasping his, her voice steady. "The promise is this. Hold but to the right. If you find your way, you will see clearly at last, and your vision will never be taken from you. If you fall, you will have a good death, and I will be with you."_

_Tony swallows. He is afraid and this is no time for it. There will be more than enough fear to go around inside the forest. "Ok. I can live with that."_

_"My son. My beloved." She reaches up to kiss his cheek, places her hand over his chest and light begins to glow there, spilling out between her fingers. "Be bold."_

_Tony bows his head in acknowledgement, and the white light flares up, the burning cold in the centre of  his ruined chest spreading outward to surround him, brighter and brighter until everything, everything that Tony is, is obliterated.)_

Tony startles awake, barely keeps himself from falling off his workbench. Dummy is holding a stone-cold cup of coffee, trying to press it into his hand, but Tony ignores it. He  feels an awkward pain, a weakness in his chest. A shortness of breath that has nothing to do with his lungs. When he lifts up his shirt to look, squinting against the light of the arc reactor, he sees hairline markings, radiating out from the embedded access tube, faint and dark at the same time. Disquieting. He wonders what is going on.

Tony Stark dreams of his mother every night. He never remembers his dreams.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Per the Catechism of the Council of Trent (HT Wikipedia): 
> 
> _Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen._


End file.
